Typing class: It’s like a coma, but not

Thanks to our school’s requirements, I am stuck in a typing class in my senior year of high school. Me! Typing!

We have to use this dreadful program straight from the pits of the software division of Hell called “MicroType Pro”. First of all, it’s from about 1990. Computer programs are outdated in weeks, if not days, and we’re using an eighteen-year-old typing program. Secondly – and this is a real drawback for those of us in the United States trying to learn how to type – it doesn’t speak English.

It teaches us about how we need to meet our “top goals”. It talks about “keying” instead of “typing”. Once you hit the exclamation mark lesson, it scatters that dreadful excuse for punctuation all over the practice sentences, as though it’s trying to falsely cheer you up after you’ve wasted hours upon hours on the other 20-odd lessons. It drills ideas into your head about being punctual and typing quickly and practice.

The only thing that saves me – indeed, any of us seniors – from brain death is the Internet. I have to tell you, games like this one have never been so entertaining. And Solitaire? Hell, I’ve never seen a more fun game in my life. I even know all the keyboard shortcuts and cheats. Anything at all beats keying our top goals for the day.

Maybe someday I’ll post the stuff I write in there. That’s the only really fortunate thing about the class – you’re graded on how well you can use Word, not what you end up typing into it. If it wasn’t for that, I’d probably bash my head into a computer screen.